Chapter 10: Is That an Apple on Your Head?
Don, June 28-29
After our first week of hiking, we had determined that there was nothing essential we had forgotten to bring. But we had experienced some breakage and lossage (?!) that needed to be remedied before we headed back into the mountains. Over the past week we had encountered only a couple of one-room sports stores, and they invariably did not carry what we needed. Other than those, we had to resign ourselves to searching vainly through the “miscellaneous” shelves of tiny general stores. As we trudged into the prosperous town of Bürglen, we were delighted to come upon a large Inter-Sport store that was a revelation. It had EVERYTHING!
The staff of the store were apparently used to muddy, unkempt backpackers, and showed no signs of surprise or distress when we dragged ourselves in. They were, however, all interested in hearing about our trek – where we had walked from that day, where and when we had started the whole walk, where we would go the next day, where our eventual goal was.
“Where have you come from?”
“Sargans.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Mont Blanc.”
“!!!!!!!!!”
At this point Mont Blanc was still a month’s trek to the west, and playing the Mont Blanc card in our conversations with the locals always got that sort of reaction. A month later, we would substitute saying we were heading to Mont Blanc with saying we had started at the border with Liechtenstein. It worked just as well, even better actually, since by that time instead of being an aspiration it was already a significant achievement.
We spent an hour in the store getting one of my ancient trekking poles repaired, replacing worn out and missing rubber tips (used for road walking) for the poles, buying a new water bottle (the top of one of mine had cracked), and getting a can of waterproofing spray for shoes and jackets and pants that had been severely tested over the previous week.
The manager of the sports store informed us that the nearest public campsite was in Flüelen, on the other side of Altdorf and another 3-mile walk. By this time, we were all exhausted and hungry enough to accept his recommendation of the 600 year-old hotel Zum Adler across the street.
In my semi-official capacity as translator, and in order not to overwhelm the proprietors with filthy, exhausted backpackers, I left David and Angela in front of the hotel and trudged up the stairs to the restaurant. As in most of the other hotels we had been in, the restaurant bar doubled as the hotel reception desk, and the only people in the restaurant were the owners, help, and a couple of local regulars sitting at a table near the cash register smoking and drinking. (The no smoking regulations that the rest of the civilized world has adopted over the past 20 years have apparently not penetrated the Swiss Alps.) All heads turned to stare at me. By now I should have been used to the “What planet did these weirdoes drop in from?” stare whenever we went into a restaurant or hotel, but it still made me uncomfortable.
After showers and laundry, I went downstairs to call Rhonda and my mother back in the States. There was no pay phone, so I asked the owner if I could use the hotel phone to make a toll-free call through my long-distance international phone service.
“No,” he responded, “I won’t know how much to charge you.”
“It will be billed to my credit card.”
“But I won’t know how much to bill to your credit card.”
“You don’t have to do it. It goes automatically to my credit card.”
“Then how will I get my money?”
“You won’t need to get paid. It doesn’t cost you anything.”
“But you’re using my phone.”
After fifteen minutes of this he threw up his hands and let me use the phone. I don’t think that even then he understood, but I was incredibly persistent and some people think I have an honest face.
By the time I’d finished my calls it was time for dinner. Angela, David and I went down to the restaurant to replace a few thousand calories deficit that we’d built up over the past several days. It’s amazing how good food tastes after 10 hours of walking in the mountains carrying a backpack.
The first thing we did the next morning was go to the William Tell Museum, which was in a 12th century tower around the corner from the hotel. According to legend, Tell was a native of Bürglen, and the whole Tell story is supposed to have taken place down the hill in Altdorf and on the lake just to the north of it. The museum featured an excellent narrated slideshow which made strong connections between the lives of the 13th century Swiss and the mountain farmers of today.
In actuality, there may never have been a William Tell who refused to bow to the bailiff’s hat, had to shoot an apple off his son’s head, was arrested and escaped while being rowed across the lake to prison. What is certain is that in 1291, representatives of three Swiss cantons signed a pact to defend themselves against outside control and to ensure they had a say in their own governance. The other certainty is that the William Tell legend is omnipresent around the world and especially here in Switzerland. Tell has become a recognized symbol of courage and strength, and the slideshow and the museum exhibition displayed hundreds of examples of Tell-labeled products from breakfast cereals to packing crates to financial services.
After the museum, we took the short walk down the hill to Altdorf, a splendid small city that dates back to the end of the first millennium, full of beautifully restored old buildings around cobblestone squares. Since it’s at the northern end of the St. Gotthard Pass, one of the main trade routes between northern and southern Europe for the last 700 years, it has been a much sought after piece of real estate.
Altdorf was bustling. Shoppers rushed in and out of the hundreds of small shops, and the sidewalk restaurants and cafes were full of locals basking in the brief sunny respite from a month of rain. In the central square workmen were erecting a marquee for some kind of local festival the next day, while waiters from nearby restaurants sprinted back and forth setting up food stands. After a week of tiny villages and hamlets it was quite a shock.
We went to Migros (the Swiss equivalent of Super Wal-Mart) to fulfill the promise I had made to Rhonda (and to my mother and Rhonda’s sisters and Elena and every other female that I had spoken with in the past 2 months) to buy a cell phone that would work in the Alps in case we needed one in an emergency. Since we wouldn’t often have access to electrical outlets to charge the phone, I would turn it on only when I needed to make an outgoing call.
After Migros, we wandered around Altdorf a bit, had a leisurely lunch and went to the tourist information office to inquire about local campsites and the route for the next Via Alpina stage over the Surenenpass to Engleberg. Talk about Swiss efficiency! Absolutely every question we asked, the clerk (whom David dubbed “a minx”) pulled out a detailed brochure that had exactly what we needed. The tourist information office also offered public Internet access for the incredibly reasonable price of CHF 3 per hour with the first 20 minutes free (most places charge CHF 12-15 per hour), so we spent an hour handling e-mail.
Then we walked the 1½ miles north to a small commercial campground to pitch our tents. The facilities were nothing short of sparkling: beautiful toilets, sinks, laundry and washing facilities – truly amazing. After a week of either camping rough or having private rooms in small hotels, being lined up in a row of tents, camping trailers and RVs was a big change.
This was our first experience with the system of “menu pricing” at public campsites in Switzerland. Over the next 8 weeks, we were to see charges per tent (often different amounts depending on the size tent and/or the desirability of the tent’s location), per person (both to use the facilities and for the local tourist taxes), per 2 minutes of hot water in the shower (a 1 franc coin plunked into the shower automat while you stood gasping under the sudden stream of ice cold water waiting for it to warm up), and per bag of garbage disposed (a different price for each size of bag). If we’d been using the campsite’s electricity or water hook-ups, there would have been still more price options.
Since Altdorf is “the crossroads of Switzerland,” the other guests at the campground were an eclectic lot. For a while before dinner I wandered up and down the rows comparing notes with the Brits and showing off to the Dutch and the Germans my ability to speak their languages. Within a few minutes I was usually able to tell which country someone was from before hearing them speak, just by looking at their sleeping facilities. The Brits all had huge, three-compartment tents, the Dutch had nearly identical camping trailers, and the Germans and Swiss had pristine, elaborate RVs.
Later, David and Angela sat at one of the tables in front of the campsite’s tiny snack bar and ate bratwurst and drank beer while I heated up a greasy sausage in a pot of greasier chicken-noodle soup.
Speaking of crossroads, the night was not particularly restful. Our tents were pitched on the other side of a wooden fence from a major road; a few hundred yards further was the autobahn heading up the Gotthard Pass, and in between was one of the main train lines connecting northern and southern Europe. After midnight the traffic wasn’t regular enough to produce the kind of “white” noise that I could sleep through, so I was awakened every few minutes as cars, trucks and trains came roaring past.
By the time I got out of my tent at 6:30 the next morning, the exodus from the campsite was well under way. The Dutch were the first to go, followed by the Brits and then the Germans. By 7:30 we were about the only non-permanent residents left. Clearly, this was not a campsite where people came to stay for days to relax and enjoy nature and peace and quiet.
By the way, “permanent residents” in European campsite terms refers to people with trailers that they leave at the campsite full time. Many of the trailers are set on permanent foundations and have built-in extensions. Some are even surrounded by flower and vegetable gardens inside of little white picket fences.
